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We’ll never get the chance to think about what we actually want.

People’s opinions depend on their moods, habits, and the upbringing they’ve had.

None of that ever stays constant. Just like our habits and thoughts keep changing, theirs do too.

So if we keep trying to make everyone else happy all the time, we’ll end up feeling exhausted.

And in the end, we still won’t get the result we actually wanted.

That’s why we need to learn to think independently about what we want, what we feel like doing, and what feels right or wrong to us.

Remember the days we used to go home after a thrilling day of elementary school, after the fun yet exhausting games of freeze tag, and sitting down for the first time all day just to relax. The days that we were so small compared to the big open world, and not having a care about it because of the butterflies in my stomach from the high swings, that put me at first place for who could swing the highest.

Wouldn’t life be so simple to live out the days where all we had to worry about was eating all of our vegetables before desert? Having my plate filled with dinosaur nuggets, and ketchup on the side, next to the broccoli that I never could stomach to eat. Having the occasional barbecue with a bunch of adults talking about politics I didn’t understand or the sports that didn’t interest me enough to keep my tiny mind focused. It would so nice to jump from the understandings of adulthood back to being lost in the conversations with my parents friends.

Now we have to worry about if our love is what we had always dreamt of or what we had seen growing up. Trying to find the similarities to the tv shows and movies we watched rather than what our parents taught us love was. It’s always so funny to go from wanting to grow up more than anything in the world to wanting to go back in time just for one more day of freeze tag and notes from our parents in our lunch box. Worrying more about how many likes our most recent post has, rather than being one of the first picked in gym class for dodge ball.

Life is full change and yet somehow it’s always just as hard to face the change that is inevitable. We always look forward to the next chapter in our lives until we realize that we aren’t going to be the same person before and after each step.

Never once did I think that living from one paycheck to the next is where I would be right now. Most people don’t see where they will be in a year, a month, a week, or even a few days. The future holds more than anyone could ever see and we never know where we will end up. That isn’t a bad thing, just another change to face in the life we are uncertain about. There’s never going to be a point in life where we know with a hundred percent certainty of where we will be tomorrow.

Changing for the better doesn’t always look pretty. There are tears, screaming matches with our parents, harsh words to friends, and the beauty that comes after. Finding the love of your life after loving someone who couldn’t love themselves. Getting kicked out of my parent’s house and finding my new place in the world that got so much bigger after 30 minutes of yelling. Quitting a job that supported my bank account but not my mental health. Not every step on the ladder of life is stable and yet we all make it somehow and someway.